From mirasidar to pattadar: South India in the late nineteenth century

In November 1874, when the new raiyatwari settlement was in progress, R.W. Barlow, the Collector of Chingleput District in the Madras Presidency, submitted a report to the Madras Board of Revenue. The report was on the ’evils arising from the Mirassi tenures ... the heavy coercive process resulting therefrom, and the measures I propose as the remedy’.’ Barlow, who was apparently having a difficult time in enforcing the new rtii-vtitwari settlement, listed the following four causes for explaining ’the unsatisfactory relations’ between mirasidars and payakaris (non-rnirasidars) and ’the frequent occurrences of the false complaints of trespass, theft, robbery, and even arson’,